China Largely Shrugs at Shake-Up After Taiwan Elections

BEIJING — The election of Tsai Ing-wen as president of Taiwan was met in China on Monday with sparse and largely critical comment, suggesting both a lack of interest toward a candidate whose party’s nativist leanings many ordinary Chinese do not understand and censorship in the news media and online forums about an outcome that the Communist Party had not wished to see.

Many commenters lashed out at the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, for losing the election. China’s ruling party prefers the Kuomintang to Ms. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party because the latter is supported by many Taiwanese who favor independence. China has said it might retake Taiwan by force if the island embarks on formal steps toward independence.

The Kuomintang was founded in 1912 under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, about a decade before the Communist Party, giving it a certain seniority in hierarchical and age-conscious Chinese culture, and it has enjoyed growing popularity in China in recent decades. But the Communists won China’s civil war in 1949, forcing the Kuomintang to flee to Taiwan.

“The Kuomintang really are a bunch of losers. The Democratic Progressive Party dares to shout Taiwan independence, why don’t you shout unification?! Wavering to left and right, like grass blowing around on the top of a wall! You really need to think about things!!!!” wrote one person in response to an article about the party’s defeat on Sina.com, China’s biggest news portal. The comment garnered more than 1,200 approvals.

The article originally appeared on www.guancha.cn, or The Observer, an online news and comments aggregator.

“This isn’t the Kuomintang, this is Chiang Kai-shek’s party,” said 40Zhenggan, garnering more than 130 approvals and referring to the former party leader who died in Taiwan in 1975.

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Residents of China’s capital said they were concerned that Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in the presidential election in Taiwan would have a negative impact on cross-strait relations.

“A party that is doomed to disappear, a party that is without any clear political identity,” 40Zhenggan wrote. “The Democratic Progressive Party’s identity is extremely clear, it’s Taiwan independence! And the Kuomintang is afraid to react, afraid to shout unification; it muddles along, it shuts its ears to the bell,” or warning signal.

On Weibo, which can be a lively forum of debate on politically neutral matters, visitors searching in Chinese for “Tsai Ing-wen” or “Taiwan election” found only limited results on Monday, mostly articles from state-run news media that warned Ms. Tsai against pursuing independence.

Attempts to read “all results” led to a mishmash of topics, common when a topic is deemed too sensitive to be discussed freely in public.

But in other articles, there were some cautious voices that expressed support for the election.

“Even though I don’t know what it is, I hope that in my lifetime I can cast a vote,” wrote Liaoren de jimo suo shenqiu_250, garnering 296 voices of support.

Some Chinese who have been to Taiwan said a political system where the party in power changed from time to time “would be good for people,” helping rid a society of corruption.

Politics in Taiwan has in the past been a raucous affair, but this election showed “more maturity both from Taiwanese and politicians,” Luer Freeman, another commenter, said.

“People think the Kuomintang is more friendly to China and do not have a good impression of Ms. Tsai,” he said, adding that there was another reason, apart from censorship, for the muted reaction to the election among Chinese: “Actually, many friends around me are not interested in politics.”